Horror Off-Season: Asylum Blackout

I don't have too much to say here, but since I had put it on the to-do list I should make an entry about it.

The Incident was released in Europe in 2011 and released in the U.S. in 2012 as Asylum Blackout.  It was Alexandre Courtès', formerly one half of the music video directing duo Alex and Martin, feature directorial debut.  Despite the English script and American cast, this seems to be part of the New Wave of French Horror that has been making quite an impact lately.  The movement seems to be characterized by gritty realism, extreme graphic violence, and a left-field psychological twist ending.  That last one is mostly just my observation from the few movies I've seen.

Asylum Blackout is set in what looks to be the late 80s in an asylum for the criminally insane.  It focuses mostly on the kitchen staff at said asylum, who are also in a band together.  Their relationship is oddly antagonistic for people who are supposed to be friends, although they do have some good moments where they show that they really are looking out for each other before the insanity begins.

The inciting event here is that there is a very bad storm raging outside that blows out the power at the asylum, which for some reason has no backup generators and I think like 3 security officers.  The lights go out, which for some reason triggers a group of inmates led by Richard Brake (he played the creepy pervert in the Doom movie) to riot.  They free all the other inmates who proceed to brutally maim and murder the staff.

Most of the meat of the movie is really dark, with a lot of contrast.  It makes everything look really sharp and dangerous which lends to the unsafe atmosphere they seem to be going for, but it also makes it really hard to follow sometimes.  I quickly found myself disoriented and lost.  I didn't know where we were in the asylum, who people were, or what they were trying to do.  I was just watching "things" happen.  It led to me losing interest and realizing I missed huge swaths of movie that I would then go back to try to rewatch, only to realize I'd actually seen these parts but couldn't tell the scenes apart.

The gore is really convincing and uncomfortable and the setups for the tortures are really deranged.  I was doing a lot of "Oh...no...don't do... oh.. just... ew."  But that's about all it was.  There's no motivation to the inmates' actions except to be cruel and violent, so the writers may be trying to make some point about the senselessness of violence.

The film seems pretty well put together, narratively, but the low lighting made it hard to follow.  The extreme brutality without purpose thing has really become quite boring to me at this point, and while I would call it horrific it's just not what I want out of a horror movie.  The very end of the movie is also one of those left-field moments that I don't think anyone saw coming.  I guess it's supposed to be showing that George's shattered psyche has trapped him forever in some hellish nightmare version of his workplace because of what happened.  It's a bit confusing, but probably my favorite part of the movie because of how surreal it is.  It's bizarre and actually creepy, instead of just shocking.

If it's your cup of tea, it's probably a very fun watch...but you've been warned about how weird the ending gets.

--PXA